‘Hands off’ protests hit their mark, nationally and locally
A balloon lampooning President Donald Trump floats outside the Jackson County Courthouse on April 5. Cory Vaillancourt photo
Joining millions across the globe, thousands in Western North Carolina rallied this past weekend, demonstrating against the policies of President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk while expressing grave concerns about the future of myriad federal programs and services. Their message? “We want people to know that we are not going anywhere.”
That’s what Jackson County resident and Forest Hills Village Council Member Nilofer Couture told The Smoky Mountain News on President’s Day, Feb. 17, during a protest at the base of the steps of the Jackson County Library in Sylva. On April 5, she was back, along with hundreds of fellow demonstrators.
“We are still here because this country belongs to the people, and we will not be silenced to see our rights and everything that we fought for taken away,” Couture said. “We are here today because this is not business as usual. We are facing an unconstitutional threat to our country, our civil rights, our freedoms, through an illegal power grab. And now is the time to make our voices heard, because, if not now, then when?”
The Sylva protest was part of an international movement, called “Hands Off,” that saw substantial protests across the region, the state, the country and even in places like Britain, France and Germany.
More than 500,000 people — according to some estimates, much more — attended 1,200 domestic events in opposition to sweeping reforms introduced by Trump and Musk. Protesters condemned deep cuts to public health programs, federal job eliminations, and the dismantling of key government agencies and growing threats to civil rights, especially those affecting LGBTQ+ individuals, immigrants and low-income communities relying on safety-net programs like Social Security and Medicaid.
Regardless of the issues, a common theme expressed by demonstrators was that they were willing to fight to protect the rights and entitlements they’d enjoyed — and worked for — over years, if not decades.
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Diane Bevis traveled from Cherokee County, in the far western part of the state, to Macon County, where a large demonstration took place at the gazebo in downtown Franklin.
“It is time for citizens to come out and stand up and express their frustration and their disgust with what is happening in Washington,” Bevis said.
Bevis added that she’d hoped to sit back and enjoy her retirement, but instead she is now forced to fight for something she’s taken for granted. Proposed undermining of the Social Security system has her, and her husband Fred, upset. Musk’s DOGE has implemented staff cuts to more than 10% of the agency’s employees, calling the social program “a Ponzi scheme” and its beneficiaries “parasites.”
“It’s totally unfair,” said Fred. “If they want to balance the budget and fund Social Security, they should look for where the money is or the people that haven’t been paying into it.”
Another demonstrator in Franklin didn’t have to travel as far as the Bevises. Dezarae Ritchie is a Franklin native, an Army combat veteran and a transgender woman.
“I don’t agree with their trans veterans positions,” said Ritchie, who was holding a sign that said, “I fought for your right to hate me.”
Army Combat veteran Dezarae Ritchie turned up in Franklin to protest anti-LGBTQ+ policies. Cory Vaillancourt photo
In January 2025, Trump signed Executive Order 14183, known as “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness.” The directive instructed the Department of Defense to update its regulations to bar people from serving in the military if their gender identity differed from their sex assigned at birth. The order justified the move by pointing to perceived impacts on unit cohesion, mental and physical fitness and the overall performance of the armed forces.
“I’m worried about my health care. I’m worried they’re going to take my health care away. I’ve been on hormones for about a year now, and I’m worried that whatever it is they got going on is going to stop that,” Ritchie said, while expressing further apprehension about where the anti-LGBTQ+ policies could go.
“I’m worried about being arrested simply for being me, and being thrown in a camp,” said Ritchie.
In Waynesville, the largest courthouse lawn rally in recent memory, organizers claimed attendance of 1,000, and they were probably close. That event featured speakers from local government and nonprofits who sought to raise pertinent concerns before the enthusiastic crowd.
Blake Hart, executive director of Haywood Christian Ministry, lamented USDA cuts that will hurt farmers and increase food insecurity in a region already struggling with hunger. Cory Vaillancourt photo
“I don’t know when it became political to support those who feel hunger, to feel empathy for those who experience poverty, but early in March, the USDA canceled $1 billion of local food purchasing money — money that was meant to purchase food from small local farmers to go directly to our schools and to go directly to our food banks,” said Blake Hart, executive director of Haywood Chrisitan Ministry. “That’s in addition to $4 billion that would have been promised for future iterations of the program.”
In an email, the USDA said that the programs that had been cut “no longer effectuate the goals of the USDA.”
“So supporting farmers and feeding the hungry is no longer the goal of our government,” Hart said. “I want to say that the single fact that poverty exists in the wealthiest country our world has ever seen is the most damning charge against us, and there is no acquittal for it.”
When his turn to speak came, Waynesville Town Council Member Chuck Dickson hammered the administration’s threats to social security and pointed out that in Haywood County, one in three people relies on the system — much higher than the national average.
“They’re lying about Social Security being full of fraud and abuse,” Dickson said. “They even make the ridiculous claim that 200-year-old people are getting Social Security. The goal of this disinformation campaign is to undermine trust, to gut the most successful government program in history and to privatize it and give it over to Wall Street.”
Dickson then asked the crowd to pull out their phones and save the office phone numbers for Western North Carolina’s Republican Congressman Chuck Edwards, who has refused on multiple occasions to speak to The Smoky Mountain News about protecting social security, Medicaid and veterans benefits, dating back to his 2022 campaign.
Edwards also recently came out in support of Trump’s tariffs, which most economists agree will result in higher prices for consumers. With financial markets crashing and inflationary pressures lingering, those on fixed incomes like Social Security simply can’t afford any more bad news.
A final speaker, Kristen Wall, highlighted the administration’s purge of an independent, federally funded nonprofit dedicated to one of humanity’s most noble aspirations — the pursuit of peace.
Wall had worked for the U.S. Institute for Peace until she, along with others at the Institute, were fired via email on March 28. The USIP, established by President Ronald Reagan and funded by Congress, was targeted for the scrap heap by another one of Trump’s executive orders.
“Elon Musk and I actually have a lot in common,” said Wall during her second local speech in less than 24 hours — Wall had appeared at the United Methodist Church’s Peace Conference at Lake Junaluska the previous day. “I want to root out fraud too. That’s why I oppose the White House’s fraudulent firing of our board and replacement of our president. I am I am opposed to waste. That’s why I am sickened by millions in contracts being canceled after USIP spent years developing trust with peace activists all over the world. That’s why I’m sickened that USIP’s website, which has provided conflict resolution training to tens of thousands of people here in the United States and in conflict zones around the world, has been taken down. It’s why I’m sickened by closing down an entire Peace Institute that has existed for 40 years whose entire peace budget of $50 million is 400 times smaller than just one of Elon Musk’s Space X contracts at the Department of Defense.”
All three of the local rallies, plus one in Bryson City, took place in counties that during the last election voted for Trump by margins of between 54% and 68%.
As the Waynesville event concluded, speakers reminded the crowd that demonstrators would continue protesting at the Historic Haywood County Courthouse every Friday at noon, just as they had in previous weeks — hearkening back to Couture’s comments in Sylva earlier that day.
“This shows the politicians in power that we are here, that we see them, that we hear them, and that we are not going to tolerate their actions,” she said. “We know that even if 3.5% of the population turns out, that we can change the direction of this country. We’re not asking for a huge number of people, we’re asking for a small minority of people that consistently show up to these events to make their voices heard and not to be afraid, because there is a lot of fearmongering going on right now, telling people not to come to rallies, telling people not to show up.”
